We bring together design, research and strategic thinking to make meaningful progress towards a post-carbon built environment. We provide design services, undertake hands-on construction and refurbishment projects, and work with public, private and third sector organisations interested in developing and delivering a regenerative, low-carbon built environment.

Design

Our design team has a track record of producing award-winning, contextually specific buildings based on regenerative design principles, for both public and private clients. Our work demonstrates bio-based materials can produce generous, robust and beautiful spaces, and we work with clients to support informed decision-making about the whole-life time impact of their project, working across the project stages from brief development through to overseeing construction.

Research

Our not-for-profit lab supports public, private and third sector lead research working towards a lower carbon construction industry in the UK, with a focus on regenerative material sourcing and circular economies. Our projects address the barriers to change, from land-use and policy constraints to technical and material challenges in supply chains and on site. We deliver strategic planning, regenerative system design, material research and product development.

Make

MC Make is a learning platform that foregrounds practical and accessible construction skills. We run education programmes and courses that tackle the significant skills gap in the UK: the country lacks the technical knowledge and skills required to transition to a low carbon construction economy. At the centre of the project are hands-on workshops, led in partnership with master builders and material specialists from across the UK.

Our work investigates how material and industrial cultures shape the world and challenges the regulations, supply chains and processes that to a large extent prescribe how the buildings we inhabit are made, function and feel.  We think this can change and needs to change at speed. Modern methods of construction have the capacity to transform the way in which things are built and offer the space to generate new forms of culture in the construction industry.

Through our work we have demonstrated that low carbon local materials can be more affordable and durable than globally-sourced, petrochemical-derivative materials, and are capable of comfortably meeting and outperforming industry standards. The material resources on which our futures are dependent - softwood timber, stone, clay, lime, plant fibres and shiv - can be grown and sourced across the UK and their production is low intensity. As reducing embodied carbon in the construction industry becomes necessary, and as oil prices rise and we look towards a post Brexit economy the UK will need to rebuild its manufacturing economy and crucially make commitments to a low carbon approach. 

In the UK current architectural languages predominantly belong to a lineage that is born from cis white male cultures. The fact that it is so hard for us to think and design beyond these languages is in part due to the fact that they are now embedded in the vocabulary of components, products, and regulations that frame architectural possibility. Our work explores the potential for a new architectural language to emerge through and from direct contact with materials and the processes of making and a creative interpretation of the regulations.

Construction and maintenance presently accounts for over 40% of total UK carbon emissions. 11% of the industry’s carbon emissions are derived from the manufacture of materials. Current housing models depend on large amounts of high-energy materials, mass-manufactured overseas, with short lifespans. If we are to halt the progress of ecological breakdown we need to radically rethink the logic of current construction methods, the materials we use and our approach to growth.  In doing so it is likely that we will need to both recover some of our forgotten technologies and develop entirely new forms of architectural language.

In this context we have established Material Cultures – an organisation which brings together design, research and action towards a post carbon built environment. Inherently integrative, the design-led research project intersects material science, engineering, systems thinking, digital technologies and architectural design with a direct, active and practical approach. We aim to co-opt the factory as a place of creativity rather than mass homogeneity.

We are interested in developing qualitative prototypical buildings, which are sustainable, economically viable, and positively impact their inhabitant’s lives through considered design and accessible adaptability.  We develop building typologies which touch lightly on the ground. In a climate in which warranties dictate design, and the nature of construction contracts limit quality, Material Cultures seeks to redistribute the priorities of the construction process in favour of design and sustainability.